Assembling pipe flange hubs together with seal rings therebetween has generally required technicians to improvise methods to correctly locate the seal ring(s) between the pipe flange hubs that are being attached to one another. Specifically, various seal ring arrangements such as Standard GRAYLOC seal rings and Reflange E-CON, R-CON, G-CON and T-CON seal rings have been used for sealing connection points between the hub areas of pipes that are being attached to one another.
Piping systems are often precision cleaned and can be easily contaminated by improper installation methods. Both the hub areas and the seal rings can be easily damaged if the seal ring is not properly aligned prior to final clamping of the connection.
Various unsuccessful methods have been used by technicians to adequately, safely, and easily locate the rings between the hubs. For example, technicians have been known to directly insert the rings between the hub areas with their fingers. This insertion technique has often resulted in personal injury such as pinched fingers to the installer.
A common installation practice has been to heavily coat the seal ring with heavy grease, and attempt to xe2x80x9cstickxe2x80x9d the ring in place on one hub face, while the second hub face is moved into place for the final connection assembly. This technique has caused messy surface areas of grease about the hub assembly, and has been known to fail if the ring starts to slide and shift from the initial placed position of the ring.
Other installers have been known to resort to looping a string around the seal ring and suspend it while the pipe hubs are being positioned. However, looping the string about the perimeter edges of the ring in order to suspend the ring can result in the ring slipping out of the string loop. Inserting the string into the through-hole of the ring has other problems such as how does one remove the string after the hubs are attached to one another, and leaving the string in the hub assembly can create a poor seal.
Other known failed techniques have centered around using tape, plastic wrap to temporarily hold the ring in place, and other manual positioning techniques such as using screwdriver tips, knife blades, and the like to support the ring. However, these techniques can also damage the rings, and/or further contaminate the hub assembly.
Various types of patents that would be related to the prior art include: U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,455,011 to Harding; 3,585,704 to Schroeder; 4,344,215 to Dearman; 4,697,483 to Rodgers; 4,872,709 to Stack; 5,168,783 to Shea; 5,582,084 to Sarmiento; and 6,012,362 to Wang. However none of these prior art techniques and patents is capable of allowing a suitable grasp of the various seal ring shapes so that the seal rings can be placed cleanly and safely during closure and clamping of the hub assembly.
The invention provides a seal ring installation tool that properly aligns the seal ring for installation without causing contamination and damage to the components, while eliminating potential injury to the installer""s hands and fingers. The seal ring installation tool lightly clamps and holds the seal ring during an installation process and is adjustable to accommodate a wide range of seal dimensions. The seal ring installation tool is fast, clean, safe, inexpensive, and does not require any tool maintenance.
The seal ring installation tool can be used to install both ribbed and ribless seal rings. The tool has arms with flat sides that can further support an optional extra seal ring within one a pipe hub by just laying against the extra seal ring when the seal ring held by the tool is put in place.
A preferred embodiment of the tool for installing seals includes elongated first and second arms, each having outer ends that face one another with each of the ends having longitudinal grooved indentations. A handle such as a pair of pliers is attached to opposite ends of the arms and allows the arms to pivot relative to each other. The arms can be attached to the nose portions of lockable pliers, which can be adjustable to have selected openings to support different diameter seal rings. A seal having edge portions is supported by portions of the outer ends of the arms so that the seal is not compressed by the tool, and the tool allows the seal to be positioned between adjacent pipe ends. The grooves on the arm ends can have flat tipped edges with internal angles. Each arm end can have two longitudinal grooved portions. The tool can be used to support both ribless seal rings and ribbed seal rings. Each of the arms can have flat sides so that an optional second larger seal ring can be held within a groove in a first hub on one of the pipe ends as another hub is being moved against the first hub. The tool can support the seal rings between pipe ends that are to be joined together without damaging nor contaminating nor having to personally physically contact the seal rings while the seal is between the flanges to be joined together.
Further objects and advantages of this invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of a presently preferred embodiment, which is illustrated, schematically in the accompanying drawings.